Carrier Strike Strategy

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent

Thursday 28th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate led by the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who gave an excellent introduction. He set out the history of carrier strike capability in the UK with aplomb, and spoke highly of our capability and future opportunity, which was fantastic.

[Sir Graham Brady in the Chair]

I share the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), who raised issues about industrial capability. I speak with a degree of interest: I think I am the only Member who was actually involved in the design and construction of the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers in Glasgow. Let me mention one of the most striking aspects of being involved in the project. When I first started as a graduate at BAE Systems, the chief engineer gave us a briefing on the Queen Elizabeth class and talked about the complexity of the project. One thing he said really struck home; he put up an aerial photograph of RAF Lossiemouth and said, “You’re looking at 5.6 million square metres of real estate. We have to condense the same number of aircraft movements into 0.3% of the space. That’s how we deliver the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier.”

That shows just how complex the delivery of an aircraft carrier is; an airfield is being compacted into 0.3% of the usual space, and we are trying to deliver the same intensity of operations at sea in all weather conditions. That is why, in a nutshell, an aircraft carrier is such a complex project. It is probably among the top five most complex engineering projects ever undertaken by mankind. It is a great testament to British engineering that we have been able to achieve this capability, despite the challenges posed by the inconsistent construction runs and feast-and-famine orders that have plagued our shipbuilding industry for decades. I think that is what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North hinted at, as did the hon. Member for Witney. He talked about the bad decisions made in the 1960s. An example is the cancellation of the CVA-01 aircraft carrier project, which was intended to be called HMS Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth—we got there only 40 years later. The TSR2 strategic bomber was also cancelled at that time.

It seems that history has a habit of repeating itself. I lament the very poor decisions made in the 2010 strategic defence and security review, which destroyed the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft. That is now recognised as a failure of judgment, and we are trying to replicate what we had, but with the loss of British sovereign capability to build large fixed-wing aircraft like the Nimrod. Looking at the failure to adapt our shipbuilding capabilities for the long term, I fear that the national shipbuilding strategy has a series of flaws that we have to be aware of.

On the construction of the aircraft carrier, there was real difficulty getting match-fit again in order to deal with the scale of the project. That is largely what I was concerned about in Govan. I have a photograph of me standing in bay 1 of the ship block and outfit hall at Govan as lower block 4 was being transferred out of that hall and on to a barge in order be taken to Rosyth. The size and beam of the aircraft carrier was dictated by the fact that the shipyard was built by a Norwegian company to build gas tankers in the late 1980s and 1990s. The width of the aircraft carrier was determined by the size of the hall. We were building it in a shipyard that was never designed or constructed to build an aircraft carrier—the whole structure of the carrier was designed around our industrial limitations.

It feels like we have not learned from the mistakes made and the constraints imposed by industry in this project, which is why we have not really looked at how the national shipbuilding strategy is getting us to upper-quartile performance in world shipbuilding. That is a glaring omission from the document. I hope that the work of the all-parliamentary group on shipbuilding and ship repair, which is bringing forward a review of the national shipbuilding strategy in the next few weeks, will offer constructive and positive suggestions of how we can improve that strategy. It is critical that we get this right.

Looking at the threat to the shipbuilding industry, in Glasgow, 2,723 people are supported on a full-time-equivalent basis by the shipbuilding industry. It supports an additional 3,220 jobs in Scotland, which speaks to the scale of the aircraft carrier project. It supported 8,000 shipyard workers in—I make a slight correction here—eight shipyards. If Scotstoun and Govan are included as separate, distinct shipyards, there are eight. Never confuse Govan and Scotstoun as a single shipyard—that is a fatal error in Glasgow.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I think my hon. Friend might want to raise this issue with the Minister, because that the data available on the Royal Navy website says otherwise.

[Mr Sweeney]

We must correct the Ministry of Defence; otherwise, some fairly indignant Glaswegians will be coming to bang on its door.

The issue goes back to the drumbeat of orders, and stability in the order book. I used to sit with colleagues in the shipyard and we would look at resource planning. We would plug in different projects and see the curve of labour demand over the next 10 to 15 years. We knew that redundancies or contractions would have to be made at some point, because the loading of the shipyard’s work programme was not smoothed; there was failure by the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury—in terms of financing projects—and the industry to co-ordinate properly to ensure as stable and smooth a curve as possible. That kind of curve would have delivered learning-curve benefits, industrial efficiency and the confidence to invest in world-class infrastructure and processes, and would create a virtuous cycle that delivers a world-class, competitive edge that would mean we could sell ships around the world at a competitive price, and deliver a sustainable and growing shipbuilding industry.

If we can optimise that equation, we will be in a good place, but I fear that the national shipbuilding strategy will not address that issue. One of the symptoms is the Type 31e. It is a laudable aspiration, but the reality is that we are committing the same mistake time and again. We are going to year zero and designing and building a new platform from scratch every time. That is a total failure to understand how industry works. The Americans have been building the same class for the last 30 years, with incremental improvements to the same platform. We need to work to that sort of concept. There is no reason why we cannot adapt the Type 45 and Type 26 hulls for a number of different uses. Building the ship as a raw steel box is only about 8% of the overall capital cost; it is how it is fitted out that drives the cost into the platform. If we can get a standardised, basic ship type for each type of ship needed for the Royal Navy, we can drive efficiency into the programmes, get more hulls into the water, and build a rigorous, carrier strike battle group around the Queen Elizabeth class, which would allow us to get the bulk back into the Royal Navy.

I have spoken to the Royal Navy, which says it has 19 escorts, but it needs 24 to meet all its planning needs. The Navy needs to bridge that gap, but how will we do it? There is no explanation of how that is happening. I would say that we need another 24 plus. We had 32 escorts as recently as 20 years ago. How do we get back to that situation? I do not think that Type 31s will solve that problem. How do we fix that issue? It is not just about looking at the aircraft carriers, which is a fantastic class of ship in isolation; it is about how we build that resilience into the carrier strike battle group. If we do not get a correct and efficient escort proposition, we will not meet that need. That goes back to getting our industrial capability correct—something that is not being addressed by the national shipbuilding strategy.

Another symptom of the problem is the fleet solid support ships competition. If you ask me, it is absolutely insane even to entertain the idea of an international competition for this, because it belies any understanding of how to drive value into the project. Looking at the fleet solid support ships, 6,700 jobs will be created or secured, including 1,800 shipyard jobs and 450 apprenticeships. Some £272 million will be recycled back into the UK economy through wages and supply of payments to the Treasury. Those figures must be weighted in the judgment for the UK bid on fleet solid support ships, and they must be weighted into the need to sustain the critical mass of industrial capability that the aircraft carrier left as a legacy at Rosyth.

In the next few years, we are potentially looking at over 1,000 job losses across the Babcock group, and at the closure of Appledore, which built the bulbous bows for the aircraft carrier. There are huge industrial capabilities at risk. Look at the Rugby site, which builds electric motors for the integrated electric propulsion system for the Type 45 and the aircraft carrier—one of the most fantastic industrial achievements of the UK. That is at risk again; General Electric proposes closing that strategically important site. These things need to be gripped by the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury, because we are losing a war of attrition on our industrial capability in the shipbuilding industry.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I want to touch on the capability that we are losing from General Electric. We have already lost one of the capabilities, which was in Kidsgrove in my constituency. We were given assurances that the capability would be sustainable long term after its redeployment to Rugby and Stafford, yet we are losing it. Industry is just not supporting us in the right way if that is not part of the sovereign skills capability and it knows there is a steady drumbeat of orders.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is critical that we look not just at the first-tier equipment manufacturers, such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, in which the Government have golden shares and can direct operational decision making to an extent, but at the second and third-tier supply chains. After all, 3,000 people involved in the aircraft carrier project were in the supply chains. We need to look at the industrial capabilities that are critical to maintaining sovereign capability. It is clear that General Electric has made an operational decision to move that capability to France. That is not in the British national interest, so we need to make it clear that we will not accept that. It is as simple as that. It is the Government’s duty to make that case and use whatever leverage is required to make General Electric change its mind. The Government are there to correct negative market decisions, and that is what needs to happen to sustain our industrial capability.

My vision is of a better national shipbuilding strategy that looks to the future and the capabilities that we need to sustain, and ensures that we have a long-term capital investment proposition with the Treasury that reflects the complexity and long-term nature of shipbuilding programmes, finances them properly on a multi-year, generational basis, and invests in the capital infrastructure that is required to get our shipyards match-fit. It is a great tragedy that the world-class shipbuilding capability on the Clyde has not been realised, and that we are still building Type 26s in the same old hall built by a Norwegian company for gas tankers in the 1980s. It has served us well, but when the business case was made for building that hall in the 1980s, we sure as hell did not think we would be building aircraft carriers and Type 26 frigates in it.

This is about not just the narrow business case of one programme and the investment for building Type 26s in the shipyard, but all the other ships that will follow in its wake. This is a 50 to 60-year capital investment programme. The industrial benefit of doing that is enormous, and the Ministry of Defence has not addressed it. I hope the Minister will address that point, because it is crucial that we start to think about this in those terms. The silo mentality about projects does not serve our defence industrial capability. We need a much broader view and much more integration to secure our skills base. We must infuse our ageing shipbuilding workforce with more apprentices. We need sustainable training programmes and a stable demand pipeline through programmes such as the fleet solid support ships, which should be plugged in to take up the slack that has come from the downscaling of the aircraft carrier programme.

Similarly, why are we not planning for a proper replacement for HMC Ocean, rather than retrofitting merchant vessels? That is a rather foolish and superficial way of doing it. Let us build a new helicopter landing platform, a replacement for the Albion class and a world-class shipyard that is able to deliver them. That is what we need to do to pull all this together and realise the industrial legacy of the Queen Elizabeth-class programme, which was an exemplar of British engineering. It was a truly world-class, world-leading programme. We talk about building the space shuttle and the international space station, but the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier is up there with the most complex engineering projects ever undertaken by the human race. We should have a great national celebration of that achievement. Let us make the most of the legacy.

Shipbuilding Strategy

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sweeney]

The impact was absolutely devastating, and we saw the wider impact in Govan as well, which was a commercial shipyard up until 1999 when Kvaerner pulled out. That Norwegian oil company rebuilt the yard in the early 1990s for commercial oil tankers and gas carriers. The result of that collapse was disastrous. Sir John Parker said that just as we had got British shipbuilders match-fit, ready to compete, the rug was pulled from under them. Just as the industry was ready to re-enter the market and be a globally competitive player, it was wrecked. That is the sad legacy of the collapse of British merchant shipbuilding to the point where we are entirely reliant today upon the Ministry of Defence to sustain what is left of British shipbuilding capability. That is partly why I am concerned about the national shipbuilding strategy, if it is restricted in its entirety to naval shipbuilding and not the wider issue of how we re-establish a market foothold in commercial shipbuilding. The two are intrinsically linked.

If we are to achieve a competitive advantage we ought to broaden our horizons and re-establish how we deliver a resurgence in British commercial shipbuilding capability. That was Sir John Parker’s biggest regret. That is what drove his frustration at that time, and a lot of that is what underpins the recommendations in his report. He talks about a vicious cycle of changing requirements, which the right hon. Member for New Forest East mentioned, and a year-zero approach every time we have a new MOD shipbuilding programme which duplicates effort and introduces unnecessary costs. It is so bespoke in its approach to designing ships that it introduces unnecessary costs, which render British shipyards uncompetitive, even in the naval sphere, never mind the commercial sphere.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for securing this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) has just hit the nail on the head. Does he agree that the lack of a steady drumbeat of orders to ensure our industrial base has caused this problem, and that the wonderful words of the shipbuilding strategy are not being delivered by the Government?

[Mr Sweeney]

I absolutely agree. We see a cognitive dissonance between the vision of the outcome desired and the prescription to deliver that vision and commitment, which are not in alignment. They are not going to deliver it. That is the tragedy of it. We all want to see the national shipbuilding strategy succeed. We are trying to deliver our own collective understanding of what is best for the British industrial capability into this document, so that we achieve the outcome of a globally competitive and effective shipbuilding industry in the UK again.

My hon. Friend mentioned a feast and famine approach to British shipbuilding, which has long been an issue, particularly as the commercial capability has fallen away. I look in stark contrast at the American approach to shipbuilding. The Arleigh Burke destroyer programme plans to build 77 ships. Those ships have been consistently under construction with the same hull since 1988. They have been built since the year before I was born, and it still plans to build more. That is a consistency of approach that we ought to think about adopting in the UK. It would essentially be a continuation of the Type 23 frigate programme, but adapting its technology and capability and maintaining the learning curves achieved over a 30-year build programme. That would be a huge opportunity for British shipbuilding. Why do we insist on stopping every time we build six Type 45s and starting from scratch on a Type 26 when a Type 45 platform could have been adapted to deliver the same capability as a Type 26? The approach is wrong-headed.

The Type 45 project has 13 different types of watertight doors. Why do we have such a huge level of variance in the programmes? We have no standardisation, no grip on the design, no standard approach to delivery, and no innovation in adopting new products and defence standards. We have no resilience or innovation in defence when it comes to an entrepreneurial way of delivering ships. If we were to benchmark it against how Meyer Werft build a complex cruise ship, the lead time between specification to delivery of the ship is minuscule compared with what we do with the equivalent ship of, say, our Type 26 platform. It is years and it is unacceptable. We need to seriously grip that if we want to drive down costs, deliver value in the naval shipbuilding industry and achieve the outcomes in terms of numbers for the Royal Navy that we desire.

The prescription is chaotic. It talks about a vision for having more

“certainty about the Royal Navy’s procurement plans”,

yet it wants to introduce a competitive programme for a Type 31. That goes right back to the early 1990s with the Type 23 programme, when Swan Hunter was competing with Yarrow shipbuilders on the Clyde, and what happened? None of those shipyards could invest in modern facilities and modern practices that would deliver the benefits in terms of timescale and minor efficiencies that would allow the ships to be built for value for money. It ended with the collapse of Swan Hunter and a drip-feeding of orders. There were huge redundancies in the shipping industry and huge uncertainty. This is a recipe to return to that model that was deeply flawed in the 1990s and led ultimately to the loss of British shipbuilding capability. That is why we are appealing today for a commitment to uphold what was originally planned in the terms of business agreement, which was extinguished.

A letter of 19 October from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), said that the terms of agreement was extinguished. It committed to a single world-class site for complex warship building on the Clyde and investing in that shipyard facility to make it world class, upper quartile. That would deliver the benefits industrially to allow us to deliver a national shipbuilding programme for frigates and destroyers, which would ensure that they had a consistency of build that would deliver the long-term benefits, learning curves and efficiencies. It would drive down the cost of the ships and allow them to be built at volume, which, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East mentioned, is necessary to sustain a larger Royal Navy fleet. That is how we should do this. It is not about spreading it around, which will not work.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary programme has better potential because it has a lower gross compensated tonnage and is a less complex ship, although it is still complex. If the tonnage of 40,000 tonnes each was spread around the remaining UK shipyards, that would provide the bedrock of capacity to sustain all the shipyards around the UK, while having the designated complex war shipyard on the Clyde. That is what happens with the Canadian and Australian shipyards and it is what happens in the United States. That is the approach we ought to have. Why has the national shipbuilding strategy not taken account of international benchmarks? Why has it not got a commercial shipbuilding focus as well to develop a longer term model based on European norms? Why are we not committed to building British ships, including the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, in the UK? I could go on for much longer because I am closely associated with the topic.

In summary, I have outlined what we want to see changed in order to make the national shipbuilding strategy worthy of the name it deserves. We need world-class UK shipbuilding back, and the way to do it is to adopt those suggested improvements.

UK Amphibious Capability

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Smeeth]

I could not agree more. Having visited our Royal Marines in the Arctic to observe their training, I know how important that is for not only our own capabilities but the partnerships we build with other marines from our allies.

It has been suggested that the role of HMS Bulwark and Albion could be replaced by our two aircraft carriers or a cheaper Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service offering, but that is not what either is designed to do.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

This comes after the loss of a landing ship dock auxiliary from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Largs Bay to Australia in recent years and the pending decommissioning of HMS Ocean without any formal like-for-like replacement. The aircraft carriers are unsuitable for subsuming that role as a landing helicopter dock ship. Does my hon. Friend agree that that in itself—never mind the loss of the Albion and Bulwark LPDs—should be a matter of criticism and scrutiny in the House?

[Ruth Smeeth]

My hon. Friend has pre-empted the next paragraph of my speech. Why on earth, having spent £7 billion on new aircraft carriers, would we use them in this way? It is a waste of capability and an appalling use of the cutting-edge platform we have just built. As importantly, they do not have the capacity to carry or launch amphibious landing craft, and their holds are not designed to meet the specific requirements of the Royal Marines with regard to kit and platforms. They also cannot be used independently of the fleet and, as I think we are all aware, they cannot be deployed very quietly.